briggsseekins said,

Bob Tonucci said,

‘Thou art, who hast not been!’
Pale tunes irresolute
And traceries of old sounds
Blown from a rotten flute
Mingle with noise of cymbals rouged with rust,
Nor not strange forms and epicene
Lie bleeding in the dust,
Being wounded with wounds.

For this it is
That is thy counterpart
Of age-long mockeries
‘Thou has not been nor art!’

Bob Tonucci said,

23. Why Don’t We Kill Them Off and Be Done With It? (from “Send Bygraves”)

By Martha Grimes

Bobby and Bunch
(The Honorable Smeel-Carruthers twins,
And staples of the Puddley social scene)
Are always turning up at lunch,
Or at hunt breakfasts wearing hacking jackets,
Or suddenly appearing on
The terrace swinging tennis racquets.

Bobby and Bunch
(Brother and sister—they’ve the same
Blue eyes and flaxen hair and ruddy cheeks)
Say things like “Topping game!”
Or “Stone the crows!” or “Sticky wicket!” or
“I say, you ARE a brick!”
Or else, “We’re off to London Wednesday week.”

They drink a lot of sherry, tie their sweaters
Around their necks and drive an open car.
And when it rains they stay at Stubbings
(The family seat), or else go slumming
Down at the Bell. One never finds them far
From moneyed uncles, cream teas, and croquet.
Their hobby is brass rubbings.

No matter what
Garrotings, knifings, poisonings, or heads
Stashed in hat boxes under beds
Turn up, or torsos tossed in trunks,
Walks running red with blood, air thick with menace—
Bobby and Bunch
Will unaccountably be playing tennis.

Why must it be these two who find
Lady Whitsun dead? Poor Billingsgate
Is stuck with them: “Now, Mr. Smeel-Carruthers,
And Miss—you didn’t touch
Anything, did you?” “Heavens, no!”
Says Bunch. “At least not much,”
Says Bobby, “nothing but the letters—

“We tossed those in the grate. And scrubbed the stain
Out of the Axminster. And then the cup—
You know—the tea things needed washing up
Straightaway. I had some port and read
A bit whilst Bunch was in the potting shed.”

The Noochie-Coochie Man said,

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable,
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table,
David Hume could out-consume Schopenhauer and Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya ’bout the turning of the wrist,
Socrates himself was permanently pissed…

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, with half a pint of shandy was
particularly ill,
Plato, they say, could stick it away, half a crate of whiskey every day,
Aristotle, Aristotle was a beggar for the bottle,
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart, “I drink therefore I am.”
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he’s pissed.